Most mid-size companies are building infrastructure for problems they don't have—yet.

Former NASA engineer Tom Barber reveals why your 200-person company doesn't need Kubernetes, and shares the exact framework for deciding what to build vs. buy in platform engineering. If you're spending months setting up "enterprise-grade" infrastructure for startup-size teams, this episode will save you from expensive over-engineering mistakes. 🎯 What You'll Learn: Why Kubernetes is overkill for most mid-size companies (and what to use instead) The 4-factor framework for build vs. buy decisions that actually works How NASA's over-engineered systems collapsed when funding shifted The 4:1 ratio rule for balancing builders and maintainers on your team Why "boring, maintainable infrastructure" beats sophisticated complexity every time 📥 Free Download: Get Tom's Build vs. Buy Decision Framework at engineeringevolve.com ⏱️ Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction: The Kubernetes Heresy 2:58 - The NASA Story: When Smart People Over-Engineer 5:51 - Platform Engineering for the Missing Middle 8:06 - The Kubernetes Problem 12:58 - Build vs. Buy Framework 20:48 - Internal Tools That Actually Matter 23:51 - Infrastructure Organization & Documentation 27:38 - Automation, AI, and Team Sizing 34:10 - Bringing It All Together 🛠️ Resources Mentioned: Retool - Internal tool platform Terraform & Bicep - Infrastructure as Code GitHub Actions & GitLab CI - CI/CD pipelines AWS Secrets Manager & HashiCorp Vault - Secret management 💡 Key Insight: Your infrastructure sophistication should match your team's capacity, not the available tools. Most platform infrastructure is table stakes, not strategic differentiation.